It's silent, so silent one could hear the one leaf that rustled, the timid whisper of a breeze that carried itself through dead branches outside the curtained window, the hushed murmurs of lost ghosts that lingered in the bland walls, forlorn, questioning, asking, Why? Why are you here? and he had no answer. It was always the same. It had always been that way. It was impossible to change.
A room so bare and sombre, weak lights illuminating the larger parts and shrouding the rest in a frightful darkness; shelves of books, stacks of vinyl and CD's, paint splattered like blood at a crime scene, the smell that stuck to every object being one of closure, humidity, dread.
The beam overhead sneered at the human's pathetic glance of longing, tauntingly remaining still and high above the ground. Had he had some rope, he could tie a noose, but what wishful thinking that was, to imagine he had the courage to put his head through such a hole again. No matter how much he wished for it, he refused to believe it could be so easy.
His eyes swiftly swept downwards, falling upon his chest of drawers topped with most of the items he had struggled to obtain in a pitiful search for happiness, but of course such happiness was fleeting, and with or without them he remained the same: a prisoner of his own volition, hiding in the corrosive embrace of the four walls that kept growing closer, shrinking in around him until he could hardly inhale without sputtering a cough.
It was silent, the kind one has when utterly alone, the kind that allows one to torment oneself, the kind that is akin to that of a cemetery beneath the moonlight: eerie, suffocating, deafening.
He refused to do anything. Nothing could change.
It was like this, you see: a busy road, with buildings on both sides of it. The sun graces one half with its warmth, while the other remains in the frigid shadows. He was on the side of the shadows, watching as the world carelessly strutted by on the sidewalk opposite him, bright in colours and boisterous in sound. Should he want to reach the other side, he would have to cross, but the cars and trucks would never stop driving, constantly chopping his view of the other side, constantly teasing him with what he could have but wouldn't. One step onto the tarmac and he'd be squashed, run over like the miniscule creature he was, a bug smeared against a window pane, an ant beneath the sole of a shoe. So he's stuck on the dark side, looking into the light, and it was an irrefutable fact that seemed to be unchanging.
The beam was still there, still waiting － as it had the other three times he had attempted to hang himself from it like a coat on a hanger, one song left on repeat and playing loudly so that he wouldn't have to hear his own choking and mewling, his own raspy breaths before the last. No, he'd rather have a song playing instead.
It had happened that the first time he attempted, a fragment of himself still wished to stay, deluded by the possibility of change. The second time he attempted, his knot slipped loose and he crashed to the floor, neck sore, knees throbbing and a wrist fractured. The third time he'd attempted, he was closer to death than he could have ever dreamed possible － then a knock on his apartment door, his landlord or maybe a neighbour, merely inquisitive at first and then becoming frantic at his lack of response but strange sounds.
Please. Please. Another minute, just some seconds.
Tears had begun to well in his eyes, fingers still clawing against his own true volition at the rope fastened around his neck, and then the front door was opened and a panicked shriek was released. Neighbour it was, though he couldn't fathom why.
He was saved, but for what reason?
Half a year went by and the neighbour moved away. Whether somebody else had taken over their apartment, he didn't know. Now he only went out in the heart of the night, when nobody would see him and he wouldn't have to see anyone. He'd talk to anything he'd see: the stray cat, the lampposts he'd pass, the trees he'd greet, and the moon he'd ramble on to.
The moon was always there, always listening, always watching － the sole depository of Yuto's hope.
》》》
there won't be a strict update schedule but the short chapters will be posted in bulk
i also added a warning in the intro for mentions of suicide and death
anyway thanks for reading
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BRIDGES. － a.yt + j.ws
Fanfiction❝All bridges connecting this drab, gloomy island to the bright and happy mainland have been burnt.❞ In which a shut-in begins to leave letters to the moon, waiting for a reply that comes by a river's current and dead tree leaves. written: 12/04/20-2...
